From an investor's perspective: all small returns round to zero. No outcome other than "Company gets absolutely massive" makes a meaningful difference to my ne

From an investor's perspective: all small returns round to zero. No outcome other than "Company gets absolutely massive" makes a meaningful difference to my net worth. Accordingly, if one of my CEOs said they were optimizing in the 0x to 2x range to avoid letting me down I'd tell them to do right by their team/family/self and call me when they had a new company to invest in. From a founder's perspective: If you want a job at AmaGooFaceSoft you can get one whenever you want (we're assuming you're very talented and in the current economy). If you want a house worth of money as a result of working at AmaGooFaceSoft, you can get that by getting the job and then waiting. Most people do not get into startups because they are the glide path to AmaGooFaceSoft careers. People might consider the option value of the next thing, or the certainty that the next thing will not involve a manager and HR department, higher than the (not insignificant) amount of money AmaGooFaceSoft will pay for engineers bought in quantity.